Happy Birthday to Me

Now that we actually have a backyard we are taking full advantage of it. The nights are getting cooler, but we are trying to extend our summer as far as we can. I think we spend more time in the backyard than we do in the living room, actually. Having a backyard (and a husband who loves grilling) makes it really easy to entertain people, too.
I invited my close friends and family over to the house last weekend to celebrate my birthday. It was a small gathering, but I had so much fun. My Mom had originally said she wasn't coming and I was kind of bummed out, but I understood because she lives two and a half hours away. But then she totally punked me by showing up with my brother, who I also thought wasn't showing up. That totally made my day! I was also really happy to see my niece Gabby and cousin Austin's daughter Amber come over to our house for the first time.

Jess, Austin, Lisa and Fauna (Amber too) getting ready to play bocce ball.

Amber and Gabby.

Thanks to Jeff, Nick and Jess for prepping and grilling.

I love party favors.

I told Jeff to get me a birthday cake that said happy birthday to me on it. He took it literally.

All of the cousins in one place. This is kind of a rare occurrence, but awesome!
I tried something different this time when I invited everyone over. Usually, I just send out an email to let people know they're invited to something at our house. For this BBQ I created a Google Event. It has a cool feature called Party Mode, which allows guests who have RSVP'ed for the event to post photos to the Event page straight from their phone. Instead of me being the only one running around with a camera, other people shared photos as well. Everyone invited can see the images posted to the Event page. Here's a video to see how it works.